History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 54

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362

USA > California > Fresno County > History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I > Part 54

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Figures such as these could be multiplied. Later in the year the regu- larity of the publication of these returns was interrupted and the publicity was only periodical-presumably on the occasion of big totals-the boom was flattening. December 17 week 155 deeds represented stated consideration of $355,119 and the actual total probably $500,000. December 21 rolled up twenty-one deeds or $42,450. For the times in the first experience with a real estate boom, these total sales for a week or a group of days were un- doubtedly extraordinary. But it is to smile to compare them with the pres- ent day and especially the records during the first half year of 1919 when a single transaction involved a third, a half and even more than the total of a day of the boom period, or when a day's sales exceeded the consideration that passed in the changes of ownership of farm and vineyard property for a week in the wild days of the boom.

At the height of the boom, railroad excursion trains were run by enter- prising colony and land selling agents of Fresno and San Francisco. At first the special reduction in fare was to eleven dollars and in 1887 to seven dollars good for May 18-22. Bands accompanied the excursions, teams con- veyed the visitors to the land and as a further hospitality lunches were served on the ground. The May seven dollar excursion brought 133 excursionists as telegraphed from the Lathrop junction point.

Some of the large transactions will interest the present day land buyers that regard productive raisin grape land as valued high at $600 to $1,000 an acre. May 27, 1887, the 160-acre Phelps vineyard adjoining the Butler was sold to A. B. Butler for $48,000. Two years before Phelps had bought it for $26,000. Notable wine grape vineyard sale was that of the before mentioned Barton ; 640 acres were improved and 320 unimproved; sale was for £95,- 000 cash and £90,000 in stock, more than $925,000 or $1,000 an acre, not an unusual selling price these days although a high buying one. Alexander Gordon, who came to Fresno from San Joaquin in 1874 and with W. C. Miller was for seventeen years in the sheep business with flocks of 10,000 to 12,000 sheep, started in 1888 a 145 acre vineyard bought from T. E. Hughes and J. H. Hamilton, adjacent to the Butler, improved it with residence and build- ings and in 1890 was offered $600 an acre. In 1887 the M. J. Donahoo Build- ing at K and Mariposa was sold to him for $30,000. In a few days after, Gordon sold to S. N. Griffith and R. B. Johnson at an advance of $5,000. In 1888 structure was demolished by fire and Griffith and Johnson re- erected it as the Temple Bar block as it was before it passed into the owner- ship of O. J. Woodward who made extensive interior improvements.

Mr. Gordon was long the land appraiser for the Sacramento Bank. He was the owner and projector of the Caledonia Colony and placed it on the market in twenty-acre tracts. He owned a thousand acres of land near the city, besides land in the county improved and unimproved. He and I. Manasse of Madera built the Kohler House on I Street and they were asso- ciated in twelve other houses and properties in Fresno, besides a business block with 150 foot frontage in Madera. Gordon came to California in De- cember 1869 forty dollars in debt, his first employment was at twenty-five dollars a month and after the boom he was rated at $150,000.

J. M. Braly sold his forty-three-acre farm to James Brodie, late from Honolulu, for $20,000 before moving to San Diego to participate in the boom there. D. W. Parkhurst for whom was named the addition to town south of Ventura Avenue sold in four days to local and to Los Angeles buvers $16,000 worth of the newly marketed lots. Fulton G. Berry sold $186,000 in county and city real estate in five days. Berry came to Fresno practically a ruined man as the result of mining stock gambling but he had the financial backing in Ex-County Clerk Thomas H. Reynolds, Ex-Assessor Alexander W. Badlam and of a brother-in-law Ex-Supervisor E. N. Torrey, all of San Fran- cisco, well to do men and influential in politics. T. C. White, one of the first

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to make a commercial success of the drying of raisins, bought a section of land for $12,000 and disposed of it at an advance of $8,000 in sixty days; 160 acres bought near Selma for $3,500 were parted with in less than two months for $6,400. In January 1888 lots in Arlington Heights suburb were sold to the amount of $160,000 worth.

The record could be multiplied if need be. Sufficient shown that there was a basis of verity in the assertion that the period was not a boom and a bubble without other foundation and reason than a lust for gambling but a real growth in the discarding of the village swaddling garments and that Fresno had the goods to deliver, even though the method of placing them on the market was theatrical and ultra sensational. Thomas E. Hughes was one of the foremost to start and nurture the boom, coming to Fresno with no capital other than assurance, as did M. Theo. Kearney, butt with good recommendations as to business capacities, despite previous reverses. The firm of Hughes & Sons-James E. and William M .- introduced the practice of railroad excursions of investors, carrying much of the financial burden. It may be truly said of Mr. Hughes in the words of the toast of the late Fulton G. Berry at a banquet at the Hughes Hotel December 4, 1888, in honor of O. J. Woodward: " 'Twas Thomas E. Hughes who cleared the stitmps, the brush, the stones and weeds away and paved the way for all of us to travel."

Robert Barton was also a factor of the day. He died at the age of fifty- one in 1891. He was German born of a noble Polish family, was brought to America at the age of eleven by an uncle and coming west when a young man and taking up mining and mine promotion work acquired a fortune in the Comstock days in Nevada and cast his lot in Fresno in 1881. He had anglicized his name. An incident recalling the artistic temperament of this pioneer of Fresno is the one that his youngest son, Leland, was baptised in Yosemite Valley in the pool of Bridal Veil Falls.

The Barton vineyard was showplace par excellence. It had a national reputation. It was the subject of a series of articles in Harper's Magazine. It was the guest house of every European viticultural expert investigating California's wine industry. Not in these respects alone did Barton make Fresno's name known, but also in association with the best in theatricals. This was through the Barton Opera House at the corner of Fresno and J Streets with its companion Armory Hall building. Theater was erected in 1890. It was the boast of the city and one of the best equipped on the Pa- cific Coast with a seating capacity of 1,500.

At this theater during its quarter of a century career appeared the fore- most dramatic, operatic and theatrical attractions and Fresno achieved the reputation of one of the most appreciative theatrical towns in the California circuit. C. M. Pyke of the Pyke Opera Company was the first manager suc- ceeded by Robert G. Barton who was the youngest theatrical manager in the land. He continued in the management until the last. The estate eventually lost the property. It passed into the hands of L. L. Cory, attorney at law and large city property owner, who has leased the remodeled theater to a vandeville circuit and dismantled the Armory Hall building for a modern office structure.

The Barton replaced the two first showhouses of Fresno prior to which the Magnolia and Metropolitan halls on H and I Streets accommodated the travelling companies that visited this territory. Besides there were variety halls which no self-respecting woman or man would care to visit and have it known. The first theater was the (\V. D.) Grady opera house on the east side of I Street, seventy-five feet from Mariposa, with fifty foot frontage, two stories in height. It passed into the hands of J. D. Fiske, who died a violent death, was known as the Fiske opera house and afterward as the Fresno opera house ; falling into neglect was turned in part into a beer hall varieties (The Fountain), in its last days was occupied by the Salvation Army then in

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its infancy, declared officially a nuisance to be condemned as an unsafe build- ing, bought by Kutner, Goldstein & Co. and converted into a store building.

This theater was supplanted by Armory Hall, known also as Riggs' theater, Charles T. Riggs manager. The wooden structure of one story was erected by a corporation of members of the two military companies of the city. Neither it nor the Grady was commensurate with the demands of the growing community, yet the best theatrical companies appeared in them. The Riggs ended its career as the Armory stables until dismantled to clear site for the reinforced concrete E. Gottschalk & Co. Department Store. The Grady was destroyed by fire a few years ago, the ruins torn down and thus another landmark was obliterated.

A time came when even excursions were no longer necessary adjuncts to entice land buyers to Fresno. It is the record that in November, 1887, 1,100 deeds were filed with the recorder. The last of the seventy lots of the Central Pacific's original townsite holdings were bought by Attorney Jefferson Guy Rhodes in August of that year. Such an appetite for land buying had been stimulated that the supply was not equal for a time to the demand. Then came subdivisions of town adjoining acreage property in additions and in connection with one of these, Prather's Addition named for a pioneer dentist, a lottery scheme was even exploited to stimulate sales of lots. Some of these additions were failures financially because of locations or overstocking of the market and the lots reverted to acreage property. Most of the additions proved profitable ventures and all have been annexed to the city.

It is not to be denied that the boom years were the times of town growth and development. They were the years for the granting (stimulated by the boom) of franchises of public utilities. Many of these were forfeited, having been speculations to hold advantageous routes for street railroad lines. In July, 1886, was granted the first franchise for an electric light and power company : in 1887 of six street railroad franchises, two forfeited and one repealed : besides in April, 1887, the Fresno Water Company and the West- ern Electric ; in May, George H. and Herman C. Eggers for a telephone were franchised ; in 1888 half a dozen more franchises for street railroad lines were granted and also forfeited, and so on not overlooking the May, 1891, franchise for the San Joaquin Valley Railroad Company-the Pollasky road popularly called-obtained after a bamboozlement of the people.

Principal events of the year 1889 following the hectic boom were these: January 2-Ahrens fire engine tested and accepted, being the city's first owned piece of fire fighting apparatus.

January 16-Foundations laid for the City Hall on I Street, lower floor occupied as a fire engine house and upper as sleeping quarters for the firemen and as city offices.

January 25-First cars run on the Tulare Street car line, the first in the county.

February 2-Death of William Faymonville, pioneer of the county.

February 16-Organization of the Fresno Clearing House Association. March 5-Margherita vineyard fire; loss $200,000.

March 20-Thirty-one thousand dollars subscribed for the Adventists' Church at Mariposa and O, patterned after the Metropolitan Temple in San Francisco and one-quarter its size.

March 23-Sale of 200 lots in Butler east of town on projected rail- road. Town never passed the map stage.

March 24-Sale of county hospital lots at Tulare and Q for $16,345.

June 2-Jollification over the supreme court's decision upholding the Wright irrigation law.

June 9-Fire south of the Masonic temple covering three blocks; loss $130,000.

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MOTEL

-PARSONS COMPANY WILL WHOLESALE PRODUCE MACITY TRANSFER COVAREMOTEA.

FRESNO-1916 EAST OF DRILLTOWER ON S. P. RAILROAD RESERVATION

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

August 12-Most disastrous fire for years at one A. M. starting back of the Donahoo building at Mariposa and K, covering two blocks; loss $160,000.

August 15-Popular invitation to the riff-raff to march out of town on account of the incendiary fires.

With the close of 1888, M. Theo. Kearney had blossomed out as a land promoter and his Fruit Vale Estate was on the market. Pictorial publicity was given his ambitious project of a costly estate residence, to have been a replica of the Chateau de Chenonceaux near Tours, France, most artistic existing specimen of the 15th and 16th centuries architecture. Kearney never progressed farther with his plan than to complete the residence wing of the chateau and the porte cochère to the grounds.

The death December 5, 1888, at Stockton, Cal., from Bright's disease at the age of sixty-three of J. B. Sweem is worthy the recalling. He had been a resident of the county in 1855, settling on the Kings River near Center- ville and operated the first flour and grist mill in the county. The tale was that the dam for the race supplying mill with operative power broke one day and flooded the adjacent territory. The result was springing up of vegetation and germination of grass seeds with the receding of the flood water. The demonstration led to the digging of a ditch to carry water from the river to irrigate his grain land. It was the first irrigation ditch in the county. Later it was sold to M. J. Church and associates-Church "The Father of Irrigation." The canal was the outgrowth and with irrigation agriculture in small farms became the paramount industry and the basis of Fresno's wealth.

CHAPTER LXI

PUBLIC SCHOOL DEPARTMENT OF FRESNO COUNTY. IT IS CLOSER TO THE HOME AND THE FAMILY THAN ANY OTHER GOVERNMENTAL BRANCH. MOREOVER IT IS A TRULY DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTION. ONE OF THE LARGEST IN THE STATE. THE NORMAL ESTABLISHED A STATE INTERIOR EDUCATIONAL CENTER. PUBLIC ACTIVITIES OF THE CHILDREN. SCHOOLS THE PRIDE OF A COSMOPOLITAN CITIZENSHIP. THEIR GROWTH WAS FROM A SMALL BEGINNING. STATISTICS IN PROOF OF THE SCOPE OF THE COUNTY'S TEACHING AND AMERICANIZING OF THE YOUTH.

No governmental branch of state, county, city or district is in closer touch with the home and the family than the public school department. It is the most democratic institution of the republic. During the school age minority of the child, the teacher has the direction of the child as proxy of the parent. As prescribed by law in this state, the duties of the superin- tendent as the head of the department are so many and varied that they "seem at times to spread him out pretty thin." The district school trustee is the last connecting link between him and the home through the teacher.

The superintendent is secretary of the county board of education; he is its executive officer ; he is the distributor of the text books; he apportions the school funds ; he sends out the blanks and reports ; keeps the records and statistics and visits the schools under his jurisdiction. Without assistants, the work imposed on him could not be done at all. He is the official and practical head of the schools and through him every activity and new move- ment is launched.

The official that deals in such familiar way with the public direct cannot possibly "carry out all these things in exact, cast-iron, business channels, cutting off people with a word and working for efficiency only." A kindly 22

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human element and a necessity for counsel and helpfulness are involved that must be reckoned with. These conditions and necessities every county superintendent meets with.

And above all, it is a democratic institution, closer to the people than any other of the government. This feature was emphasized in a recent bien- nial report of the state superintendent of public instruction in the answer to the question, Can a district trustee hold office, if he can neither read nor write the English language?

The answer was that he can, because there is nothing in the law to prevent it and because the only qualification of the law in this state is that he shall be a citizen, a resident of the district and shall have received a majority of the votes at the district election for school trustee. "Such is the freedom of our glorious country," it was remarked, adding that the above is also true in the selection of a county, and for that matter, of a city school superintendent. No certification is prescribed. It is only necessary to secure the popular voice. "Strange as it may seem," the further comment was that "the matter is never abused. The trustee may be a very valuable one who knows nothing of letters. The superintendent is from the school teaching class. The freedom is not abused."

The public school department is one of the boasts of the citizenry of California. It is one of the big things of the state government in the Ameri- canization of the boy and girl, a feature that received more attention than ever before as the result of the war in Europe in which the United States of America proved the deciding factor. California expended for all school pur- poses in 1916 the great total of $36,927,109.05 as against $35,379,946.68 in 1915, and of the first named sum the kindergartens expended one-half mil- lion, the elementary as the backbone of the school system twenty-one and one-half millions, the high ten millions, and the other institutions one and one-half millions. For the biennial. state school funds apportioned to the fifty-eight counties totaled $11.386,957.03 for the elementary and $1,524,752.91 for the high-roughly five and one-half millions a year for the first and three-quarters of a million for the second.

Fresno County has one of the largest public school departments in the state, yet a goodly portion of its territory is mountainous, and a no incon- siderable area of it sparsely inhabited or not at all. At the close of 1916 it had 145 elementary school districts, exceeded in number only by Los Angeles with 156. It had 541 teachers, exceeded only by Los Angeles, Ala- meda and San Francisco as counties with more dense populations. Fresno's elementary graduates in 1916 were 18,344, Alameda, Los Angeles and San Francisco exceeding it in point of number. Fresno's apportionment of state funds for 1916 was $257,154.13; total receipts $1,044,017.95. Its expenditures for all purposes were for the year $826,268.15; total valuation of property $1,807,128; its total bonded indebtedness $968,136. The daily average at- tendance was 15,840 in 1916 as against 15,378 in 1915 with enrollment in elementary schools of 18,344 and 17,977 for the respective years.

Fresno City's schools are under the direction of an elective city board of education and an appointed city superintendent, though of course under the general co-ordination of the county department. They have striven to keep pace with the growth of the city in population, but the latter has out- run them in the race. Despite the several voted bond issues for new or en- larged school building facilities, the accommodations have not met the en- rollments at the school term openings.

Fresno was made an educational center when the state legislature se- lected it as the place for the new state normal school. This educational institution cost $150,000. The bill for the necessary appropriation was intro- duced at the 1910 legislative session, but on account of a shortage of funds an allowance of only $10,000 was made for maintenance in temporary quar- ters for the succeeding two years. The regular appropriation to defray the

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cost of buildings was provided at the succeeding session. The normal school in Fresno is the only one in the valley. When students whose homes were in the valley of which Fresno is the center desired to continue their studies through a normal school they were compelled to go to other portions of the state. The train service from Fresno to valley points enables the student to spend the Sunday and holidays at home, and for this reason if none other the Fresno school will have an advantage over the others at more distant points in the matter of securing attendance. The central interior has become too important to be longer ignored in the affairs of the state. The site for the normal was donated by Fresno people and surrounding the college build- ings a new residential suburb has sprung up, where a few years ago there were vineyards.

The schools of the county and the city fill an important part in the social and public life of the communities under the direction of the earnest and inspirational work of the teachers. It might be asked, where would have been the magnificent Raisin Day pageants but for the enthusiastic cooperation of the schools? What of the board of health's clean-up and fly-swatting campaigns? Where today would be the city playgrounds de- partment with all its varied activities? What would have become of that bond issue election to acquire city playgrounds but for the school children's twelfth-hour street parade as the culminating demonstration of a campaign resulting in practically unanimous carrying of that bond issue? Where would be the school grounds and city beautifying projects, the school and war times gardens, the over-the-top subscriptions to the Liberty bonds, the sale of government war and thrift stamps and all the other varied patriotic services by the boys and girls that have been given by the youth of Fresno under the inspiration of teachers and the spirit of the times, the while Americanizing all these white, yellow and black cosmopolite and impres- sionable children of the public schools? There is not another such a "melt- ing pot" as the American public school. It is the very foundation stone of American democracy.

Is the enthusiasm of the child not overtaxed? Superintendent of Public Instruction Edward Hyatt alluded to this feature in the following paragraph in his 1916 report :

"Here comes in the flag lady to urge that we organize at once a cam- paign to put a flag in every school house; and a committee from a society upon the Stanislaus to promote humane education in the schools ; and some people who want to know the extent to which the anti-fraternity law is en- forced; and a delegation to call attention to the necessity for the metric system, or simplified spelling in the schools of the state; and a number of ladies to urge medical inspection for the public schools ; and a representative of the Thrift Organization urging that his work be taken up; and some good citizens pleading for a clean-up day, or ripe olive day, or water conservation day, or bird day, or mothers' day, or honest measure day, or country school day, or old home day, until the wonder is whether any day is left for an ordinary school day."

The school department is a progressive department. One of its activities is the distribution of state textbooks, a work that is in "exceedingly satis- factory condition" with books costing the state much less than had been expected. When the law was passed, the estimate was that half a million would be necessary to introduce the system and $200,000 annually thereafter. Actual necessities demanded only one-half of these sums. There are over 400,000 children in the schools and the cost of their text books is a little more than $100,000 a year, an average cost of twenty-five cents per year per child, or as reported to the governor "less than that of six cigars, less than six glasses of beer, less than six daily papers, less than six movie shows." The free distribution amounts to about half a million books a year to somewhat less than half a million of children. The sales of books are

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insignificant, only about $6,000 a year, sold at cost to dealers, schools and individuals and used chiefly to supply private schools.

During the 1914-16 biennial the period of the school term has decreased. The number of schools maintaining 160 days or less has risen from 482 in 1915 to 1,018 in 1916, while those maintaining 200 days or more have fallen from 252 to twenty, an average loss for every child of six days in the state. The reason for this is in the reduction of school' money when the poll tax was abolished in 1914. There was $22,592.93 less for teachers' pay in 1916 than in 1915.

Another feature of the public schools is an unusual growth in the evening or night school, due to the agitation for the education of the adult foreigner. The average cost per pupil in high school has fallen from eighty- seven dollars and nineteen cents in 1915 tô seventy-six dollars and seventy- two cents in 1916, due to the increase of the evening schools which are cheaper and adding their enrollment to the whole for the state reduce the average cost for all. Even this decreased high school education cost is high compared with the common schools where the average cost per pupil is thirty-eight dollars and four cents, only half that of the high school figure. The latter is twice as expensive because the studies are so differentiated that small classes are the result and these cost as much as the large ones, raising the per capita cost in small high schools while high school teachers cost more than those of the elementary grades.

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History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 54

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858- Publication date: 1919 Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company Number of Pages: 1362

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362